Mahita Gajanan

Ahead of the highly anticipated total solar eclipse that will cross the sky in the U.S. from coast to coast on Aug. 21, 2017, TIME editor-at-large Jeffrey Kluger answered questions from space enthusiasts during a Reddit AMA.

Kluger, who has written about space and science for TIME for more than 20 years, answered questions about the upcoming eclipse, space, science and his career during an hourlong Reddit AMA on Thursday. Here are four things we learned from the session.

When is it OK to look at the total solar eclipse?

“Basically: don’t look at the sun before totality without proper protective glasses,” Kluger advised. “Do look without glasses during totality but put them back on the second even the tiniest part of the sun reappears.”

How can you get kids interested in the solar eclipse?

“If you’re with kids tell them about Baily’s Beads,” Kluger wrote, “the points of light at the last seconds before totality that are the result of the sun streaming through the mountains of the moon.”

Why are total solar eclipses even possible?

“There is no limit to my favorite space facts,” Kluger said on Reddit, “but one of them involves the eclipse: the fact that a perfect total eclipse should not be possible since the sun is 400 times bigger than the moon so there is no way for the coverage to be complete. But the sun is also 400 times farther away, so the disks appear the same size.”

Why are humans so fascinated by the total solar eclipse?

“I think it’s because we’re running cognitive software that was laid down hundreds of thousands of years ago,” Kluger said, “and what we learned back then was that the planet works in certain ways — light during the day, dark at night, phases of the moon come in a particular sequence — and then Boom! One day it all goes screwy. No matter how sophisticated we get, [t]hat rattles us.”

A longstanding national debate over Confederate statues, street names and other markers intensified this week following deadly clashes between white supremacist groups and counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Va. One woman was killed during the weekend mayhem, while two police officers died in a helicopter crash related to the incident.

Following the violence, communities across the country made new plans and accelerated existing efforts to remove statues celebrating Confederate leaders, including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. A handful of monuments have already come down in places like North Carolina and Florida, while others are expected to be removed shortly.

Some view Confederate statues as painful reminders of one of America’s darkest periods, when the nation was engulfed in a bloody civil war and slavery was the law of the land in many states. But others view their removal as an affront to history.

President Trump on Thursday threw his support behind those fighting to keep the monuments in place, saying that it’s “sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.”

“The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” Trump added in a series of tweets.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center there are more than 1,500 Confederate “place names and other symbols in public spaces, both in the South and across the nation.” Prior to the Charlottesville rallies, several cities had already removed Confederate monuments, including New Orleans, Austin, Orlando, Louisville. and St. Louis. Many other monuments came down in the days after the protest.

Here’s where Confederate monuments have been removed, and where they’re planned to be removed next.

Where have monuments been removed?

Florida

A monument dedicated to fallen Confederate soldiers in Gainesville was quietly brought down and taken away on Monday by workers hired by the Daughters of the Confederacy. In St. Petersburg, a marker indicating the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway was removed on Monday.

Earlier this year, the city of Orlando moved a Confederate statue from a public park to a cemetery section dedicated to Confederate veterans.

California

A monument memorializing Confederate war veterans was removed Tuesday from Los Angeles’ Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where dozens of Confederate veterans and their families are buried. CNN reports the Long Beach chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy requested the cemetery remove the monument. In San Diego, a plaque honoring Confederacy president Jefferson Davis was removed from a public park on Wednesday.

New York

A marker honoring Robert E. Lee was removed from a tree in Brooklyn planted by the Confederate general in the 1840s. A plaque installed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1935 was also taken down, the New York Daily News reported.

Where will future monument removals occur?

Virigina

The removal of the statue of Lee in Charlottesville that prompted the violent protest was proposed in April. The statue has not yet been removed.

CNN reports that officials in Richmond, Va. are holding public meetings to get community input on removing the many Confederate monuments in the city. They aim to have a plan for removal this fall.

Kentucky

The Lexington city council voted unanimously to go ahead on a proposal to remove two Confederate statues from the lawn of a former courthouse on Tuesday, the Lexington Herald Leader reports. Mayor Jim Gray has 30 days to propose a new location for the statues. The Kentucky Military Heritage Commission will have to grant authority to remove the statues.

Tennessee

City officials in Memphis are pushing ahead to get permission from the Tennessee Historical Commission to remove a statue of a Confederate general from a city park. In Nashville, protesters called for the removal of a bust of Confederate general on Monday. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam urged the Capitol Commission and the Historical Commission to address the matter in a statement, the Tennessean reports.

Montana

The Helena City Commission directed the city manager to take down a Confederate memorial from a city park on Wednesday, the Independent Record reports. The decision came after Native American state lawmakers called on the city of Helena to remove a granite fountain dedicated to Confederate soldiers on Tuesday, following the violence at Charlottesville.

Texas

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings proposed creating a task force to assess calls to tear down the numerous Confederate statues in the city, D Magazine reports. Rawlings did not support the immediate removal of the monuments, although he said he personally felt the statues are “dangerous totems.” In San Antonio, a proposal to remove a Confederate monument from a downtown park was met with protests on Saturday. Two city council members filed a request in July to relocate the statue of a Confederate soldier, KSAT 12 reports.

Florida

Jacksonville City Council president Anna Lopez Brosche called for moving all Confederate monuments from public property to a museum. In a statement, Brosche asked the city’s parks and recreation department and planning department to “conduct an inventory of all Confederate monuments, memorials and markers on public property.” Following the inventory, she plans to propose legislation to move all the artifacts to educational institutions.

Maryland

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Tuesday called for removing a statue of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney from statehouse grounds in Annapolis. Taney was behind the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which denied that black Americans could be citizens.

“The time has come to make clear the difference between properly acknowledging our past and glorifying the darkest chapters of our history,” Hogan said in a statement obtained by the Baltimore Sun.

Alabama

Birmingham Mayor William Bell ordered a Confederate monument at a public park to be covered with plastic on Tuesday. On Tuesday night, city workers built a temporary structure around the statue. It is illegal to move Confederate monuments in Alabama, and state attorney general Steve Marshall has filed a lawsuit against Bell, saying obstructing the monument defies the law.

New York

Busts of Lee and Stonewall Jackson will be taken down from the hall of the City University of New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted on Wednesday. Cuomo additionally asked the acting secretary of the U.S. Army to remove Confederate names from streets in Brooklyn.

A 28-year-old Arizona woman has been accused of molesting her two young children, filming the abuse and then selling the footage on the Internet, PEOPLE confirms.

Keri Harwood, of New River, Arizona, was arrested at her home Sunday on multiple felony counts of sexual exploitation and molestation of a child, according to a statement from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

The two children involved are 3 and 6 years old, the sheriff’s office said.

Harwood allegedly told authorities that she recorded the videos for a man she met online who offered to pay her hundreds of dollars if she streamed sex acts with children over Snapchat.

According to law enforcement, Harwood allegedly “desperately needed the money and did not want to disappoint this man.”

Officials started investigating Harwood based on a tip from one of her friends. The friend, authorities claim, had discovered two videos and PayPal transactions on Harwood’s email account after logging into it to play Pokémon Go with her. (Investigators said Harwood shared her email with the friend because of “poor Internet connectivity.”)

On Sunday, authorities confiscated the video files from Harwood’s home and arrested her. They believe at least five videos exist.

Harwood remains in jail in lieu of a $150,000 bond, the Associated Press reports. It was not immediately clear if she had an attorney and it appears she has not yet entered a plea.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper delved right into the matter at the beginning of his show on Tuesday: “A few hours ago, the President of the United States revealed so clearly who and what he really is.”

“He revealed about whether he can ever be a president for all people or just for white ones, a president for people of all beliefs or just the alt-right,” Cooper said. “Today, President Trump showed the world exactly how little he knows or cares about U.S. history. He showed the world about how much a mother’s loss matters to him when weighed against whether or not she praised him. He showed the world how far he’ll go to avoid admitting he’s ever made a mistake.”

“If you look, they were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said. Cooper then showed video footage of the march, which revealed torch-bearing white nationalists chanting “Jews will not replace us,” and “blood and soil” as they approached the statue of Lee. Trump “seemed to go out of his way to whitewash the nature of what was, after all, an explicitly white power rally,” Cooper said.

The CNN host also went after Trump’s claim that he waited until he knew “the facts” to make a statement on the events in Charlottesville.

“President Donald Trump wanted to know the facts. Just let that sink in for a moment,” Cooper said. “If there is anything we already know about this president, is that he does not wait for facts to become clear before speaking. Has any president in modern history lied so fast and so frequently as this one?”

Trump’s news conference sparked emotional responses from other anchors, too. CNN’s Don Lemon said Trump “should go back to school and get an elementary education on how this country started.”

“Imagine if you were a Jewish person in Germany and you had to go to Hitler high school, or Goebbels elementary school, or middle school,” Lemon asked, referring to the Nazi regime. “That would be completely offensive to you on the deepest level, and that’s how people of color feel in this country when we have to deal with figures like Robert E. Lee, like Confederate flags. It’s no different than flying a swastika.”

Within minutes of Trump’s comments, news anchors appeared visibly upset.

“What I just saw gave me the wrong kind of chills,” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd said. “Honestly, I’m a bit shaken by what I just heard.”

Fox News host Kat Timpf called Trump’s words “disgusting.”

“It shouldn’t be some kind of bold statement to say, yes, a gathering full of white supremacists, Nazis, doesn’t have good people in it,” she said. “I have too much eye makeup on to start crying right now.”

The next total solar eclipse to cross the U.S. will take place in seven years, and even before then total eclipses will take place in Chile, Argentina, the South Pacific and Antarctica. Over the next 50 years, parts of all seven continents will see total solar eclipses.

Check out the list below to see when all the next total solar eclipses after the Aug. 21 eclipse will take place until 2067, along with maps of each total solar eclipse’s path. (In each case, the total eclipse will be visible to anyone between the blue lines, while the eclipse will last longest for those on the red line, according to NASA.)

July 2, 2019 Total Solar Eclipse – South Pacific, Chile, Argentina

December 14, 2020 Total Solar Eclipse – South Pacific, Argentina, South Atlantic